senior: book cover assignment 1

so this semester i took a book cover design class which turned out to be a real challenge for me. just another reminder that illustrators are not necessarily designers, or that graphic design is not actually easy haha. so for our first assignment we had to buy a dollar book from outside the strand, and redesign the cover.

senior: the creeper

senior: attic walk

this is the first piece of five illustrating the magician's nephew, the first book from c.s. lewis' chronicles of narnia. this is the scene where digory and polly are exploring the attic of their row house in london, to discover if they can travel between the houses via attic doors. soon they discover the secret contents of digory's crazy uncle's attic study, which is the beginning of their adventure.

this piece is very simple compared to it's companions, being a mere 5 paper pieces, but i think it's an appropriate beginning to the 9 following ones.

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

5 paper pieces

senior: the woods between the worlds

this is the scene where digory is transported to the woods between the worlds via enchanted rings and the pool designated to his world (london). already here is polly, who, under the environment's overly-peaceful influence, is asleep by a tree. this is an example of an overly ambitious design-decision on my part. the grass is made up of rings of different green atop a field of gold. not only did green prove a very annoying color to mix (all gouache hues perform and react differently to treatments) but the edges of all the rings also had to be painted. in all my cleverness i hid connections between the rings behind the trees, so that most of the grass was technically one piece and would stay together. while this helped with the issue of alignment, the gaps between the rings was so small it was difficult to paint the edges of one side without painting the edge of the other side. and while this usually wasn't a huge deal, it usually wasn't just the wrong edge that got effected but the places that are easily seen. in conclusion, the rings were not worth the trouble they caused, and i'm not even sure the color green you experience is the right one!

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

35 paper pieces

senior: carriage rides

this is a scene where jadis, after running off into london, returns to the house atop a horse drawn cab running wildly down the street. in hind sight i'm not sure why i committed to doing this piece when i could have easily found a more magical scene that needed illustrating. regardless, i'm fairly proud of this piece, even though it's one of my least favorite lol. how can that be?! first of all this was one of the most complex ones, containing 68 pieces. the cobblestones are actually all slightly attached, which i thought was kind of clever and was a lot of work for such a dry subject. i guess the reason i was so proud of this piece is that i don't enjoy architectural pieces, and there was so much perspective in this compared to the others. still i didn't bother giving most of the cab dimension, the sidewalk should be cobblestoned as well, and there should be some kind of potted plant or fire hydrant along the sidewalk to make it look more natural and filled up.

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

68 paper pieces

senior: flight

this is the scene where the horse from the previous piece has been given wings, courtesy of aslan, and has been asked to take digory and polly to the forbidden garden to retrieve an enchanted apple. the garden is described as sitting on a hilltop unreachable by foot, nestled in the mountains. i went through a lot of ideas for color in this piece because some of it was looking too tropical. in the end i went for a dry looking palette that accentuates the improbably lush growth of an enchanted, unattainable, basically deserted garden.

while i love the color of the sky with all it's flatness. this piece is still lacking something and probably could have done with a watercolor sky or maybe some indication of clouds. also it's probably pretty obvious that i was blatantly avoiding drawing the children on his back, even though in hindsight it really wouldn't have been that hard lol.

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

47 paper pieces

senior: forbidden fruit

this is the scene where digory is in the forbidden garden to pick an enchanted apple on aslan's request. at first he doesn't realize that jadis is also in the garden and has eaten the fruit revealing that the silver apples actually have dark red juice.

i really enjoyed doing this piece because the paper pieces are relatively big and not very delicate or particular. really it was a very simple piece, that used many of the same colors, however i found the effect pretty successful.

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

58 paper pieces